


Perhaps is a Promise

by Vulcan409



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drarry, Fluff, Hastily written, M/M, Major Issues, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, a lil freeform i guess please forgive inconsistencies if any, i don't know what this is, is this fluff, please?, suggest proper tags in the comments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 12:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17960735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulcan409/pseuds/Vulcan409
Summary: "Morsmordre!"Harry still remembers it. That was the day he'd learnt that the Mark he carried wasn't an ordinary one. He was supposed to fall in love with a Death Eater.





	Perhaps is a Promise

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm posting this in a hurry, because my exams begin soon and I. Gotta. Study.  
> Okay so the timeline may feel a lil shifty, but this is happening in the seventh year. So.  
> It just came to me all of a sudden, while reading the fourth soulmate au fic that day, so, you know, what can be done.  
> Let me know how it is, please?

"Morsmordre!"

Harry still remembers it. That was the day he'd learnt that the Mark he carried wasn't an ordinary one. He was supposed to fall in love with a Death Eater.

'No wonder I was so fucked up, back in those years.'

Even before Harry understood what it meant, he had learnt to be ashamed of it, so there wasn't so much of a change there. The Dursleys weren't overly fond of keeping a boy around who had a moving snake on the back of his neck. Of course, like other things about it, the Mark - much like Harry himself - bent as it was beaten. By the time he was five, the Mark was already on its way down his chest, to later occupy his stomach, and then, make a permanent home on his upper thigh.

And then, sometime around the end of Third Year, the snake grew some sort of a sphere at its tail, as if it was hatching from an egg.

Spoiler alert, it was a skull.

They always asked him what his Mark was. Everyone. All the time. Ron knew. And Hermione. He'd told them in the First Year itself. No one else, though. Not even Ginny.

Of course, his best friends didn't know that the snake had grown a skull, but still. Children don't think much of Soul Marks, much less talk of it. Especially when two of them are wearing each other on their bodies.

Ron had a scrawl on the back of his right hand. It kept shifting between Hogwarts: A History, and Wingardium Leviosa. For a brief period of time, it had turned into an orange cat, which had led to a lot of embarrassed awkwardness. The three of them had internally sighed with relief when it had dissolved into a quill and an inkpot.

It pained Harry to think of Ron, and he adjusted his glasses as he went about turning the page, as if in a hurry.

'Friendship is weird.'

Hermione had a broom, for some reason. She hated flying. And to top that, it was flaming orange, as in the Chudley Cannons. So, the shame was unbearable. Then it shifted into a chess board, and then into a broken wand, and then a crown, for the longest time. Who do you think thought of turning "Weasley Is A King" on it's head?

Now, it was a chess piece. A King, tattered. Alone.

He'd never told anyone else, and there was no question of it after the Fourth Year incident. And then in Sixth Year, Malfoy happened.

Death Eater.

Hermione didn't believe him, neither did Ron, but he knew. He knew because he wanted Malfoy and hated him, in equal parts. What a difficult time that was - what with Cho, and Ginny, and Cedric. And Sirius.

Sigh.

...

Oh, what a grief to have been born without a Mark! What a shame!

'Marked unworthy at birth. What a fate.'

Draco hated it in the beginning. He didn't care if he had some stupid mark on his body. But his father did, and that made him feel like a failure.

One day, his mother had told him that it wasn't really so bad, not having a Mark.

"That means you are free to find love, my dear. When it comes, it'll be a surprise. And there's nothing more beautiful than that, is there?"

That was Third Year, when he still talked to his mother about love and other stuff. And what are you laughing at, you should be jealous he had the mother he did.

Draco wanted nothing more than to please his parents, to earn their love. He always had to prove himself worthy of his father's love, but his mother loved him all the same. Which is perhaps why, in attempting to be worthy by his father's standards, he'd forgotten to value his mother, something he sorely regretted three years later.

As he grew, as he went through the Fourth Year and the Fifth, he found himself thinking that it was a relief that he was without a Mark. He'd become very aware of everything that he felt, for Harry Potter, in all its complexity, and it relieved him to think he was free from chasing an impossible dream. What if Potter was his soulmate? That would be awkward, right - 'and no, that wasn't wishful thinking, jeez, GROW UP.'

Sixth Year was complicated.

'And yes, that's the biggest understatement made since the dawn of darkness.'

...

Harry didn't know what to feel towards Malfoy.

'He's just a scared little coward. Scared little ferret, more like. Heh. He is scared, though. He's raised by Lucius. I was raised by Dursleys, and that's... He lowered his wand, didn't he? That means something.'  
'Does it?'

When Harry stripped down to jump into the lake, he pulled up the seam of his pants, to take a look at it. Out of curiosity, if nothing else. An year.

'It must've changed.'  
'At least a little.'

It had. There wasn't a skull - no, there was - but it wasn't so much a human skull as it was an animal's. It struck Harry how little his Mark changed, compared to others. He looked into the frozen water as things worked in his mind. It looked like a half-completed head of an animal. With a long, pointy nose. Harry smiled at the irony of it, like an idiot. He got up and jumped in, the locket still around his neck.

"I can't say for sure," he said.

He knew.  
Harry knew that he knew. The Mark was changing. Draco was changing. There was hope, then. For him. For them.

And then that moment, when they looked into each other's eyes, and Harry didn't really get it then - too preoccupied in snatching the wands from Draco - but later, he realised. When he was digging, it came to him like a lightning strikes. Sudden. Sharp.

"No," he'd protested, weak. "No, take me with you." The last part was a whisper, a plea, barely audible. Harry froze, feeling the weight of what he'd done, not having heard Draco.

'He must think I dont care. Or worse, that I hate him. Dobby knew him, didn't he? I wish I'd asked Dobby. What Draco was like. Before.'

The tears fell.

'Oh, Dobby.'

The Mark had changed. The snake part. Its scales had become more prominent, dark and gleaming, and it seemed thinner - bonier. Later, it grew leathery wings and scaly legs. A pearly white dragon, spread in a circle around the head of an emerald wolf. The dragon was fierce, its jaw threateningly open, but the wolf was sombre, and calm, his eyes shining with pride. Both had grey eyes. They fought with each other continuously, the wolf biting and the dragon breathing red-gold flames, but at times, Harry would catch them at peace with each other. Rare moments, when Harry would smile, feeling his soulmate's peace.

...

Harry Potter was a fake.

Draco felt so ashamed of himself. How had he thought of doing that? Saying that? Had he forgotten that he didn't have a Mark? That Potter wasn't his fucking soulmate?

Potter was gone. Now for the price of his escape. It was a relief that his mother was never allowed to be present whenever he was punished. He promised himself that this time, he won't cry out.

He did. Everyone does.

He hated Harry Potter. The next time he'll find him, he'll be turning him in.

He didn't. Just looking at the boy, dusty and scruffed up, and yet, beautiful - honestly were people blind, Harry Potter was the hottest fucking thing that was ever born - he was having a hard time composing himself. The way that Harry was looking at him made something flutter in his belly.

'Of all the times to get butterflies.'

"Why didn't you tell her it was me? Bellatrix?"

'Oh, you damn fool. You know why. You damn well know why.'

Everything happened so fast. He was being grabbed by Potter and shoved on the broom behind him, and he held on for dear life, literally, and that was the only coherent thing inside him in that moment.

When he was done retching, Harry knelt beside him.

'Do you want to come with me?'

'Yes.'

"Harry, leave the git, there's no time!"

'Oh, Weasley, thou art a villain.'

Draco got up. Harry Potter has my wand, he thought. He uses it. With his hand. No, he didn't giggle, that's a stupid thing to do. He turned, and the absence of Goyle hit him like a snakebite. Sudden. Sharp.

'What have I done?'

No one was looking at him, hunched up in a corner under a staircase. If it crashed on him, all the better. He deserved death. His whole life was flashing by him, like he was in a pensieve.

Slide after slide of an insufferable bully. Slide after slide of tormenting others. Slide after slide of being nothing more than a pain in someone's ass. Slide after slide of a failure. A failed son, a failed friend, a failed Death Eater.

He didn't know what was happening outside. Perhaps they were fighting, perhaps they were not. Had they paused? Perhaps.

He was shaking, perhaps. He could hear his heart beat like a drum in his ear. Were tears staining his cheeks and falling on the cracked marble floor? Perhaps.

And that was when it happened. He felt it burn - the Dark Mark. It was a scorching pain, like his flesh was burning. He put his other fist into his mouth to stifle his cry, and tears spilled from him unbidden. His eyes never left the Mark.

It was burning away, no, it was burning INTO something - mutating - into something else. He stared with wide eyes as the jet black skull on his pale skin twisted and turned upside down, and the snake, now on the head of the skull, split into two halves, like its tongue. These, too, twisting like ink being blown by a straw, making shapes. The skull swelled and narrowed and grew a mane, and the snake-halves solidified into two lines that split into smaller ones, and the next moment, it all filled with the brightest of colours.

Draco Malfoy had a roaring lion on his forearm, each hair of its mane golden and shiny, with equally shiny black antlers on its head, their ends tapering into shaky tributaries, like lightning. As he watched, ink was stolen from both the antlers to form a triangle between them, and then a circle inside it, and a vertical line. And now colourful lillies were blooming between the crooks of the antlers, and the angles of the triangle.

Slide by slide went through his mind. Slide by slide of a thin boy that everyone loved. Slide by slide of him, wanting to be that. Slide by slide of the rising ugliness in him. Slide by slide of his father, sneering at him. Slide by slide of his mother, bent, as if by the weight of her son having walked away from her. Slide by slide, of her wanting him to talk to her. Slide by slide, of her wanting him to respect her. Slide by slide, of him taking her love for granted. Slide by slide of her love, still strong.

'I have a Soul Mark.'

He was staring at it, eyes wide as saucers, mouth hanging open. A stupid thought came into his shitty head, 'wonder who it is?'

As if his Mark heard, the lion's eyes went emerald.

'Oh, so this has a bad sense of humour, too.'

He didn't know who he meant by bad sense of humour, because Potter had definitely had had his moments.

"You, unlike me, are a git."

Draco smiled. That was when he heard it. The silence. Everything around him had gone quiet, like the first few seconds after an explosion. He walked out, hurriedly. The whole castle was empty. The sound was coming from the courtyard. He raced to it, his chest already filling with dread. Shoving through the crowd, who, on seeing him, made faces uglier than a Hippogriff, he finally walked into the first line of people, and went numb.

Harry lay in Hagrid's arms. Still.

Draco looked down at his forearm, bursting with colour. He didn't understand.

"No." He could feel himself going mad. "No, no, no, no, no, I won't, I can't-"

Neville Longbottom was on fire.

"VOLDEMORT," screamed Draco, "CRUCIO!"

There were gasps as Voldemort deflected the curse with ease, and then it began.

Draco knew he was no match. Draco knew that it was his mother's wand in his hand. Draco knew he was about to die. That is why he didn't care, at all.

He didn't care. The spells were coming back to him, the wildest of them, all that he'd read, holed up at the Manor. He sent them flying at Voldemort, one after the other, swishing and flicking his wand with speed - he lacked in skill, so speed was all he had - and Voldemort, although mildly surprised, kept breaking them off. In a matter of seconds, Draco was having to move, in order to keep his pace. Voldemort was deflecting his curses on him, he was gaining, although slowly, as if he planned to last it out, to show them real well how slow a death he could give.

Everything around them was still, petrified. And then, Voldemort suddenly screamed, and there were gasps as Draco whirled about to find a dead Nagini, Neville standing over her, Gryffindor's sword in his hands. And then-

"WHERE'S HARRY POTTER?!"

The ground thundered as centaurs charged in, and the fleeling Death Eaters were being put down by Hippogriffs and Thestrals from the sky. The giants were only beginning to get up, when Voldemort regained himself, and when Draco looked at him, he knew he was done for.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Draco was thrown back by the blow of the curse, his eyes closed, but still very much breathing. He opened his eyes in puzzlement, to find that Voldemort had moved on to McGonagall, thinking him dead.

"Alright?" Draco whipped his head from side to side-

"Merlin's bollocks," shouted McGonagall, "it's Harry!"

Harry was on his knees by his side, having shed his Cloak. Perhaps Draco whimpered in an ugly way, stifled a sob-wail, or not.

He won't say.

"You're alive," he said, his voice hoarse.

That's when Voldemort saw them, his eyes narrowed. Was there fear there? Harry looked at Draco once, lingering for half a second, as if in 'just a second, honey,' and then he got up and walked over to him.

"Try, Tom. Try for some remorse."

And so it began. Again.

Draco could have watched from the sidelines, like others were, but he was too tired of it. He could feel Voldemort's cruel eyes on him as he stood up and began walking to them.

When he joined in, Harry didn't even turn to look at him, but he knew. Harry did know tricks, but what surprised Draco was the sheer magical power of this boy. His strength. And they were working together like they weren't practically strangers.

They were gaining. The very breath of Draco scared Voldemort, and that of Harry, and that was his weakness. But even then, it was Voldemort, after all. A man skilled at cruelty and pain.

'Of course he used the blinding jinx.'

Voldemort knew all his fears, everything that could hurt him, and darkness was the worst.

Draco stumbled back, and he faintly heard Harry say his name. He was shivering, standing on his frail legs like a baby learning to walk. Cruciatus had done a fair deal of damage, and it was showing itself. Draco felt weak, and helpless, everything he hated being.

Something grabbed his hand, it was Harry, he felt him - it eased Draco's shaking a little - and he felt the familiar rush of magic in his hand as Harry pushed the Hawthorne wand in his palm, taking Draco's hand in his. It was way too quick for Draco to notice everything that was happening - why was Voldemort taking so long, had Harry somehow injured him - but he heard it loud and clear.

"Avada Kedavra," said Voldemort. A whisper.

"Expelliarmus," said Harry. Draco felt it against his cheek as much as he heard it in his ear, but most of all, it was felt in his core, when his magic flowed through the wand, with Harry's.

A thud. Sight returned to him, in a flash.

The Sun was rising over the horizon, as Harry Potter caught the Elder Wand. Having leapt for the catch, the stupid seeker would've fallen, but Draco caught him in time, an arm around the scrawny boy. The Sun shone in his dusty face and his crusty hair, and Draco leaned down.

Light split in a flood, and Draco was cured of his heartache.

When they separated, there was this one moment. Slide by slide Draco lived it. Their eyes finding each other, questions, answers, desire. His exposed forearm caught the light, and Harry blinked twice. Then he said, "Wonder who that could mean."

"Potter, I swear to-"

He was being kissed again. Surprise. Nothing more beautiful. Air. He needs air. Gasp. Dreamy smile. Handsome boy.

"This is going to be hard," said Harry, looking up, eyes lost in Draco's.

"Perhaps," said Draco, running his other hand through the ugly hair. How many thousands of times had he thought of this? He was blatantly grinning. "You don't hate me, then?"

"Perhaps I don't." Then, "Everyone's watching."

"Do you want to go someplace quiet?"

"Perhaps."

They know they can't.

There are dead heroes waiting, and their aggrieved families. There are people Draco must answer to, and people Harry must let go. Fred. Remus. Tonks. Narcissa. Colin. Snape. Sirius. Lucius. Bellatrix. Dumbledore. Voldemort.

Harry is the Saviour and he has a duty to everyone, and Draco was a Death Eater and he has a duty to himself, but perhaps... well.

Perhaps, is a promise.


End file.
